exchange 2013 configuration€¦ · web viewexchange 2013 configuration3. 1. plan, implement and...

ContentsExchange 2013 Configuration......................................................................................................................3

1. Plan, implement and test an enterprise email solution...........................................................................3

Plan implementation to provide mail services to meet business requirements......................................3

Prepare existing network for mail server installation..............................................................................4

Install and configure mail servers............................................................................................................4

Preparing Exchange Server for Exchange.............................................................................................5

Installing Exchange..............................................................................................................................9

Configure users, mailboxes, address lists, distribution lists and user constraints.................................22

Creating users....................................................................................................................................22

Creating a Distribution Group............................................................................................................23

User constraints.................................................................................................................................24

Configure mail-client access..................................................................................................................26

Client Exchange with Outlook............................................................................................................26

Configure message integrity and anti-spam, antivirus and anti-phishing measures..............................32

Anti-Spam enabling...........................................................................................................................32

Anti-Malware.....................................................................................................................................33

Configure message transport to deliver mail within and outside enterprise.........................................34

Monitor mail-system performance........................................................................................................34

Implement measures to provide high availability and data recovery....................................................35

DAG...................................................................................................................................................35

Database copies.................................................................................................................................40

Test functionality...................................................................................................................................41

2. Plan, implement and test remote access to email.................................................................................42

Plan remote access to mail....................................................................................................................42

Configure mail system to provide remote access..................................................................................42

Test remote mail access........................................................................................................................42

3. Plan, implement and test an enterprise web portal or content management solution.........................43

Plan namespace and server roles and deploy web portal or content-management software..............43

Configure access and security................................................................................................................45

Access................................................................................................................................................45

Security..............................................................................................................................................46

Configure network infrastructure..........................................................................................................47

Zane Sherwood-Kok document.docx of 53

Manage design and customization of portal and related services.........................................................47

Themes..............................................................................................................................................47

Menus................................................................................................................................................49

Monitor performance and logs..............................................................................................................50

Implement measures to provide high availability and disaster recovery..............................................51


4. Plan, implement and test business collaboration tools.........................................................................52

Plan namespace and server roles and deploy business collaboration software....................................52

Configure access and security................................................................................................................52

Configure network infrastructure..........................................................................................................52

Customize to meet business requirements...........................................................................................52

Monitor performance and implement measures to provide high availability and disaster recovery....52



Exchange 2013 Configuration1. Plan, implement and test an enterprise email solutionPlan implementation to provide mail services to meet business requirementsIn the workplace a key factor to good work ethic is communication, the more communication the better a project can move along, and the easier and more readily available communication becomes the better communication gets between the colleagues. This is why Email services can be very important to any business and could even be a requirement for the business projects to get done if for example the colleagues working on the project are individually working from international distances. Exchange is a server level program that can run Email services as well as many additional features that are often excellently helpful to a business network. Such features may include calendars that can tell a colleague when a worker is available to set up a meeting with and more, or public folders which can be accessed by certain people, these people can even be set and allocated to a group or distribution list that may indicate a particular department or a division of the company.

Services to consider:

Email - Email services can be very important to any business and could even be a requirement for the business projects to get done if for example the colleagues working on the project are individually working from international distances. Email also helps the entire company to stay in contact and helps people communicate with each other easily.

Calendars – Calendars are important to people to help keep track of important dates/events/meetings that they need to attend and also to schedule when to do certain projects, and to remind them if something is due. The Exchange mail service can provide additional calendar services to make this scheduling easier from emails as well.

Resources - The Exchange service can be helpful with things like resource scheduling as well. Things like a company projector or car or even a room can be added to the directory to be booked out for certain time slots for meetings or just too better allocate to the people who need the resources to complete certain tasks.

Public Folders – A public folder is an email related service where something like a company regular newspaper can be electronically distributed to everyone in the company to read with a lot of ease as it can only take a few clicks.

External access – Email services can usually be made to be accessed easily from external resources such as from home. This can be of great benefit for availability to all employees of any company, and it helps many jobs to always be running efficiently.

User restrictions – User restrictions may even be wanted to be set for example attachments can be dangerous if left unattended to. Users can quickly run off track from the task and start sending random videos and executables to games and all sorts of things to each other over the company email service, so attachments can be restricted by size and or file type extension. Also mailbox sizes because a server can only have so much capacity to storage that can easily become filled up

Lync – Lync is another Microsoft product that works collaboratively with Exchange and helps provide secure connections and secure communications to the users. It has some enhancing features like


live contacting allowing people to see when other users are logged into their email and so they can actively communicate live on the spot.

Prepare existing network for mail server installationExchange is a server based software to enable enterprise and even small business email communications. To run an exchange server locally the minimum requirements are a server with 4-8 GB RAM, 64bit processing & enough disk memory for the emails to be saved with OS and 30 GB for Exchange (i.e. 100 GB).

Install and configure mail serversExchange will require a second server to be the DC and to run active directory and DNS so here is a Win2008 DC server.


For Exchange there should be a completely clean install of a windows server operating system to begin with. Exchange 2013 works best with server 2012.

And a clean install of windows 7 for a client machine.

Preparing Exchange Server for ExchangeTo prepare the machine for installing Exchange open cmd as an administrator and type in the following command: Install-WindowsFeature RSAT-ADDS


Next find these small Microsoft applications to install a few services that the server will need to install Exchange 2013. These installer applications can be found online and installed easily. They should be installed in the order that they are in on the screenshot below, because the 3 rd one needs the other 2 as pre-requisites before it can be installed. Install the first 2 just by double clicking on the application.


The 3rd installation also came up with this error message when trying to install it saying that Media Foundation service wasn’t installed on the server machine. Media foundation was found from the Server Manager, if you go to Add Roles and Features and under Features select Media Foundation and then install it.


Once Media Foundation is installed the Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API can be installed, open the application, read and accept the EULA and then click Install.


Installing ExchangeOnce the server has been properly prepared and updated, run the exchange installer. Select “Don’t check for updates” because it can be updated later if needed and it will only take a lot of time now.


Exchange will then start “copying” out the files that it needs and extracting them so that it gets ready for the installation. This is not yet installing Exchange but it is basically putting a lot of files into the temp for the installation to be run.

Then it takes a bit of time to make sure it initializes for the installation.


Once it is ready to go through the installation process after initializing, this introduction screen shows up. It shows and gives some links to a bit of information about Exchange 2013. Just press next to continue.


After the introduction screen it gives the EULA, read it and click “I accept” then click next.


Next it asks to use the recommended settings. As an IT administrator never use the recommended settings because then you will get things that you don’t want/need/use and won’t have features that you do want and will use. Select “Don’t use recommended settings and then click next.


Because of opting not to use recommended settings the installer now shows the screen of things to include. Select all of them because the Exchange server needs to be able to stand on its own to run the mail service in this situation.


Now select where to install Exchange to remembering that the program itself is about 7.8 GB


Choose an appropriate name for the domain to which the mail service will run with. This will become the email address extension after the “@” symbol.


Then choose whether to automatically configure malware protection during installation, this documentation also shows how to activate it later and for the sake of that this option in the installation was disabled.


Next the installer does a ‘Readiness’ test to determine if all the pre-requisites are met to install Exchange because it is such a big installation and will make so many changes to the machine and the network infrasturucture. The first test on displayed errors that can be identified in the screen shot below like a pending restart on the machine and errors because the user logged in trying to install Exchange wasn’t logged in as an active directory domain admin user, which also caused the installer trouble detecting connection to the domain on the DC for the network.


Once the pre-requisite errors have been fixed the Readiness Checks screen should look reletively clean like this, the following screenshot however does have a warning message only because the installer checks for other previous versions of exchange which wouldn’t be able able to connect to the newer version 2013 of Exchange. Now that everything is ready, click install and let it do that for the next hour or more.


After clicking the install button if everything required is installed and ready and if the installation is working then this is the installation screen that should be shown. The installation will go through 15 different ‘steps’ to the installation process, and each time it moves onto another step the progress bar and percentage will reset. There are going to be periods where it seems to stop for long extended periods of time but the installer is not frozen or stuck, just leave it to think.


Once the installation is complete the screen will appear and say that the server machine now needs to be reset, but before going ahead and restarting the server this page also gives a hyperlink that the exchange server administrator will want to be saved and probably documented for future reference because the link is for the EAC which is now as of Exchange 2013 a web explorer based access for enhanced availability to the Exchange administrator over the internet.

https://zs-exchange2012/ecp/?ExchClientVer=15-the structure to the link should be “https://” then the server name and “/ecp/?ExchClientVer=15”


https://zs-exchange2012/ecp/?ExchClientVer=15

Configure users, mailboxes, address lists, distribution lists and user constraintsCreating usersUsing the 2008 server DC, make the new users within the previously created organizational unit.

Then for the user to actually have an Email account, it must be configured at the exchange server in the Exchange Admin Center. Simply open the EAC and click the add button from the default Recipients – Mailbox tab.


Creating a Distribution GroupA distribution group used to be able to be created in the DC active directory in previous versions than exchange 2013, however in exchange 2013 the distribution group must be created from the Exchange Admin Center and it will automatically be updated in the active directory on the DC.

From the EAC, under the Recipients - Groups tab, click the plus sign that is the add button to add a distribution group. A pop-up window like such appears. Supply the fields with the appropriate information and point the group to the correct organizational unit that was created before, also add the members of the group and suggested that in a business all individual groups should be closed to protect department information and integrity. For exchange to create the group an “owner” will need to be selected, for suggestion the manager of a department in a business may be good to allocate the group owner.


User constraintsIn order to limit the size of all of the mail accounts for all users in the EAC, go to the Servers side menu, and then the Databases tab. There will be a database where all the mail is stored already configured there, click edit (the pen icon next to the plus sign at the top).

In the mailbox database window that pops up when you try to edit it there are 4 side tabs, the third one Limits is where the mailbox sizes can be limited and some other adjustments can be made. The defaults are as shown:


Changes should be made according to the size of mailboxes the company will on average need and according to how much space is on the exchange server. (or where ever the database has been selected to be stored). The extra changes that can be made are such about how long it takes for the system to automatically delete items and whether or not to permanently delete emails, which in some organizations the information in emails can be very important and it is quite possible that the emails will be wanted to be saved for a very long time if not forever depending.


Configure mail-client accessClient Exchange with OutlookStart by making sure the client machine has Microsoft Outlook installed, when the client opens up outlook for the first time this window appears for first time configuration. Clicking cancel will close the wizard and start the Outlook application but clicking next will continue to setup email accounts for the outlook application to use.

Because the client machine was logged into the Domain “Test2” account which had already been configured with an email on the domain through exchange, the program detected and auto-completed the E-mail Account settings and simplified it for the client. So the client didn’t have to type any of the required fields (i.e. “Your Name:”, “E-mail Address:” & “Password”).


Alternate options on this screen include setting up Text Messaging so that emails may be sent between mobile phones and Email accounts, and to ‘Manually configure server settings or additional server types’ which leads to a long way of configuring any kind of Email account into Outlook like accounts that can’t normally co-operate with Outlook.

Once the account for the domain exchange server is entered, Outlook will try to verify and establish a connection to the Email account. While this process occurs the system will find that the certificate for the exchange servers are not authorised by a professional organization but instead it is “self-certificated” and so the machine immediately brings up an alert to warn the client. The alert asks if you want to accept the self-assigned certificate and by clicking Yes it accepts it just for this one time, click ‘View Certificate’ to bring up the certificate itself so that it can be installed and then it will be accepted all the time from then on. (This is not always safe to do on the internet but is ok since we know where this particular certificate has come from and what it is about)


This is the certificate installation wizard in Windows 7.

Accept the defaults and continue to install the certificate with no modifications.

A security warning window will appear explaining that a self-assigned certificate can be dangerous and by installing it, the certificate will always be trusted by the computer and some harmful things may be allowed by this process, but in this case this is fine because we know that the certificate is for the exchange and is for the domain and has been generated by us, and there is nothing harmful for the


client machines or the server that installing this certificate will allow.

Now the configuration of the Email account should complete in Outlook and the client may continue.


Outlook personal Client settings

The Inbox: this is a place where inbound mail gets saved and can therefore be viewed by the recipient, the owner of the email account. Inboxes are always individual to an account of course, therefore it is “secure” to only be seen by the owner of the account.

Drafts: This is a box where unsent emails that are being written or just haven’t been “sent” are saved.

Sent Items: All the emails that have been sent are stored here like a log.

Deleted Items: Anything that gets deleted from the inbox is actually moved here, this helps keep the inbox clean while providing an easy backup in case of accidental deletion incidents.

Junk Email: Here all the untrusted or any Emails that have been declared spam by the server gets stored.

Outbox: When a client is offline for whatever reason and tries to send an email, all emails go through the outbox technically, but in the case of offline the email gets temporarily stored in the outbox until it is able to be sent.


Configure message integrity and anti-spam, antivirus and anti-phishing measuresAnti-Spam enablingTo enable anti-spam on the 2013 exchange server, the EMS must be used as there is no configuration on the interface GUI of the EAC. The anti-spam utility is an add-on plugin for the exchange 2013 software, to enable it type the following commands as shown in the screen shot.

After the command is run, as you will see in the yellow text at the bottom it says that all agents were installed properly and that the machine should be reset. After restarting the machine the final step is to set the ‘agents’ to work for the right server, to do this the following command must be entered with the IP of the exchange 2013 server.


Anti-MalwareTo get to the malware filtering, it can be accessed in the EAC under the ‘protection’ page. Select the “Default” filter and click the little “pen” icon for Edit. A new window will appear where you can edit the policies for the malware filter. On the side of the new window navigate to the settings options.

From the settings page of the “Edit Anti-Malware Policy” window, select the Notify internal senders, Notify external senders & Notify administrator options because this will mean that if any malware is detected in an email, the system automatically acts to delete the message from the system. The notifications should be activated though so that the administrator is aware that there was almost potentially harm to his system, and the sender and receiver should also be notified in case it was unintentional or falsely labelled as malware.


Configure message transport to deliver mail within and outside enterprise

“Outside”, we can’t do that…However inside works, refer to Test functionality for expamles.

Monitor mail-system performanceThe best way to monitor your mail system is to download some third party software, there are heaps of them on the internet. For a free monitoring tool that’s very easy to use try Free Exchange Monitor from Manage Engine. Just download the application and then install it to an administrative machine. From there enter the ip address or server name into server name and type a login username and password then click connect.


Implement measures to provide high availability and data recovery-multiple servers, virtual/physical

DAGBefore making a Database Availability Group (or DAG) additional databases on each exchange machine, intended to be part of the DAG must be created.In the EAC go to the servers option and on the second tab “databases” click the add button and this window will appear, give the database a recognizable name and point the server to the same server that the database is being made on. Click save when done and do the same for the other exchange machine.


In order to make the DAG a “witness” server must be appointed, and for this to be the DC machine the system may require that the Administrators group in the Builtin folder of AD have the member Exchange Trusted Subsystem group added.


Create the DAG by going to the database availability groups tab under the servers option in the EAC and click the add button, give the group an appropriate name and select a witness server, leaving the witness directory means that the default location will be used. Lastly give the DAG an IP address of its own and then click save.


Adding exchange servers may not work and result in error.

To fix the errors go to the DC and open AD and go to the computers folder, notice that there is an entry for the DAG just made, go into its properties as an “advanced view” and go to the security tab. Add both of the exchange computers and give them full permissions. Save all the permissions configurations and then disable the computer entry for the DAG.


Now add the exchange machines to the DAG by going to the database availability tab in the EAC, select the DAG and click the server looking icon with the gear called ‘Manage DAG membership’. Click the add button and select both of the servers, then click save.


Database copiesGo to the EAC ‘servers’ page and under the databases tab is where the databases are found and controlled. Select the database and locate the button to add a database copy under the triple parentheses, then click the double barrel with the add button.

This window will open, just add the other server to the servers hosting a copy by clicking the browse button and selecting the other machine. Then click save.(*important* only run both at a time even though screen shot taken with both ready to save.)


Test functionality


2. Plan, implement and test remote access to emailRemote access cannot be completed within the Challenger Institute of Technology learning network infrastructure as the proxy servers and network infrastructure would have to be bypassed to properly configure remote access which is against policy, and also because of financial reasons.

Plan remote access to mailConfigure mail system to provide remote accessTest remote mail access


3. Plan, implement and test an enterprise web portal or content management solutionPlan namespace and server roles and deploy web portal or content-management softwareThe Content management web portal solution has been chosen to be provided by WordPress as it is free and user friendly. The WordPress blog address is zskcmb.wordpress.com because ZSK is my initials and CMB stands for Content Management Blog.

From the home page of WordPress after logging in click on the website made and on the side of bar go to posts and you can make quick posts that will go straight onto the home page, or go to pages and you can add new pages devoted to separate topics, these pages can also be commented on and spark blog discussions. They also automatically get added to the menu bar at the top of the page.


When editing a new page this is the screen that you see, from here you can give the page an appropriate title, and in the big box right all the content for the page. Also you can edit the end extension of the web page.


Configure access and securityAccess For configuring instructor Jack to have access to the site go to the users icon. Then click ‘Invite New’ and the following screen appears, from here enter either the email address of the person or their WordPress account username and select the appropriate role to give them, then you can optionally write a short message to send with the invitation which is automatically generated by WordPress and sent to their email address when you click ‘Send Invitation’.


Security WordPress has its own security measures in place to protect your information, you can set the webpage to be public or private when making it, also it is important to keep your password private and that is the main security risk. Also I changed one setting to allow people to comment on my website without having to have my approval so that I don’t have to fully monitor everything that happens on it, but this could potentially be a security risk if a person posted bad things on the website without the admin knowing and others could see it before getting the chance to take it down. Because part of WordPress policy is the website needs to be age gated according to the content allowed on the website.


Configure network infrastructureWebsites hosted by WordPress are part of the WordPress network infrastructure and once published are accessible from anywhere provided with internet availability.

Manage design and customization of portal and related servicesThemesCustomization comes from many different locations in WordPress. From this screen you can go to Themes & Customize to give the website a different ‘theme’ from a selection of thousands of potential pre made themes, the theme then becomes just like a template.


Just by scrolling through here you can select a theme and click activate to elect a theme for the website.


MenusTo customize the menus for the webpage and the portals from this “home” screen go to the menus link on the side.

Now from here you can adjust the menus for the website, under pages you can select the pages to include, and all the things included are displayed on the right under menu structure, there you can click and drag and move the links around to rearrange which order the are in from top to bottom or left to right depending on the website theme chosen. Under links you can even add an external link as a ‘custom’ menu to the menu structure. When done don’t forget to click save menu or create menu which is a small blue button to the far right of the page not shown in the screen shot.


Monitor performance and logsFrom the main WordPress screen, select the site and go to stats.

From here you can scroll down and see all the statistics of views and performance of the website.

While the website is fully hosted by WordPress they have the responsibility for running it and they do not show specific running logs for down times and server side information.


Implement measures to provide high availability and disaster recoverySince the information is all hosted with WordPress they have disaster recovery measures and the information should be backed up automatically and relatively safe.

Test functionalityHere is a screen shot of my website publically available on the internet. The menu links at the top go to different pages and here is my first “welcome” post to welcome people to my website. One of the pages created also gives an available download link to this documentation.


4. Plan, implement and test business collaboration toolsPlan namespace and server roles and deploy business collaboration softwareConfigure access and securityConfigure network infrastructureCustomize to meet business requirementsMonitor performance and implement measures to provide high availability and disaster recoveryTest functionality


exchange 2013 configuration€¦ · web viewexchange 2013 configuration3. 1. plan, implement and...

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